Roger L. Desjadon does a lot of flying. He has to in order to do his job as CEO of Florida Peninsula Insurance Co. His experiences in the sky have taught him a valuable lesson about the importance of setting clear expectations for your employees.
“There’s nothing worse than spending a lot of money, going to an airport and being treated poorly by an employee that almost acts as though you’re wasting their time,” Desjadon says. “They exude a sense of having no idea why they’re even there. It’s certainly not to serve you. By the time you get off the plane, you’re exhausted and miserable. … Those are the organizations where the leader has painted no landscape or a poor landscape and the people have no idea how they fit in. To them, they are just going through the motions.”
Miserable is not the word Desjadon would use to describe his flying experience with Continental Airlines, which at one time was headed by a man Desjadon greatly admires, Gordon Bethune.
“There just appears to be a sense of purpose from every single employee,” Desjadon says. “There seems to be a happiness with what they are associated with. The result is as a customer, it makes me want to do business with them.”
Employees need to know what’s expected of them and how they are supposed to act. And that expectation has to begin and end with the management team.
“Does the management team have a clear definition of what it’s trying to accomplish?” Desjadon says. “If it doesn’t, everything else really doesn’t matter because you have no hope of anyone understanding it. Most organizations don’t ever have a landscape. They don’t have a framework for people to understand what their contribution is all about.”
It takes time and it takes patience to figure out exactly what you’re all about and be able to share that with your people.
“Take the time as a group to sit down and build it,” says Desjadon, who oversees 60 employees and 2,500 independent insurance agents. “It’s the difference between fast food and making a gourmet meal. Most organizations want to add water, stir and get an answer. When you’re done, you kind of get what you put into it. We work 16-hour days. Anyone that thinks you can have a Xanadu by working seven-hour days is naive because it doesn’t work that way.”
Here’s a look at how Desjadon makes sure his employees are on the same page with leadership’s goals for the $185 million insurance provider.
